What is recorded here

Half-buried in the hillside above a ravine, the oval hut still holds its boulder wall and a stone-lined pit that may have smelted iron or simply cooked food. The long groove cutting west through the bank suggests molten metal or water escaping the workshop, carrying the heat and danger of the craft down into the dark below. Whoever worked this terrace understood force and flow, shaping raw material through fire while the slope itself helped direct what remained.

The following description is derived from both the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Louth' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1986) and the 'Archaeological Survey of County Louth' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1991). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 17 July 2007 Situated on a gentle slope to E of a steep ravine, on a fairly level terrace on the SW slopes of Slievestucan. Immediately NW of entrance to ringfort (LH004-084001-). The site consists of a hut site, broadly oval in shape (int. dims. 6m E-W, 4.7m N-S), with an earth and stone wall enclosing the interior. The E half of the hut site is enclosed by large boulders (H 0.5m) set into the face of the hill slope, with stone-lined entrance gap at SSW. In the W of the interior is a depression, sub-rectangular in plan (1.3m E-W, 1.1m N-S, D 0.8m), partly lined with stone. A long depression (D 0.7m) extends from this to WNW, through a gap in the bank and on down to the ravine. There are similarities to the excavated iron working site at Glannafeen, Co. Cork (JRSAI 1955, 94-9), but the depression may equally represent the remains of a hearth or cooking pit and drain.

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